Mid Atlantic Brewing News August/September 2017 : Page 1

By Charles Pekow PHOTO AND ILLUSTRATION BY HANS GRANHEIM et’s say you get a five-pound box of assorted chocolates as a g gift: milk, dark, semisweet, cordials, nougats, peanut clusters, the works. If you’re a regular reader of this newspaper, you probably already have a refrigerator full of beer. How do you pair them up? You can go far beyond the cliche of matching chocolate with h porter or stout. Pairing beer gets more complicated than pairing wine because beer contains so many more ingredients, notes Randy Olmstead, owner of the Perfect Truffle shop in Frederick, Md., which only sells its own bite-sized chocolates. “Each brewer puts its own o n mark, its own ow personality, into th their beers,” he notes. Like all the expert experts we questioned, he encourages experim experimentation. Unlike beer, yo you don't want to store chocolate in the refrigerator; enjoy it at room roo temperature so it melts in your mouth faster. Coo Cooling chocolate can als also lead to water condensation, pulling the sugar out. Sip the beer first By Greg Kitsock I PHOTO AND ILLUSTRATION BY HANS GRANHEIM See Chocolate p.2 State by State News INSIDE Strength Matters .......................... 5 Book Review.................................. 6 Homebrew News ........................... 8 Maps ...................................... 10-13 Event Calendar ............................21 W. Virginia ........7 Virginia .............9 C. Penn ............14 Philadelphia ...15 E. Penn ............16 D.C. ..................17 Maryland ........18 Baltimore ........19 New Jersey .....20 Delaware ........22 f you’re making a beer float, an IPA will probably not be the first style you choose. But The Passion of Johann, from Aslin Beer Co. in Herndon, Va., was so creamy and full of tropical fruit flavors that I almost wanted to plop a scoop of vanilla ice cream in my glass. Andrew Kelley, one of the brewery’s three co-founders, describes the beer as a “decadent, fruited, New England-style IPA” (although at 9.4 percent, it’s really a double IPA). He suggests pairing it with fruit tart, dark chocolate, chocolate with almonds, “nutty stuff.” New England-style IPA is a hot style right now, a hazy, unfiltered brew that’s highly hopped but in a such a way to emphasize the fruity flavors and not the bitterness. It’s sometimes called “milkshake IPA” because of its turbidity. Mike McDonald, co-founder of Key Brewing in Baltimore, added lactose to his Gray’s Papaya IPA . Lactose or milk sugar is non-fermentable and is most commonly added to stouts to beef up their body and See Dessert IPAs p. 3